Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (15 page)

And the Bishop sang the _____ [blank in original] of the Masse in a Booke which was brought in before the Queene. And then and there was a carpet with kussynes of gold spread before the aulter. And Secretary Cycill delivered a Booke to the Bishop and there was a Bishop standing at the left hand of the aulter.
⁵²

This reads like a description of an enigmatic dumb-show, at the center of which is the object of a book. It is not at all clear what any of these books are, especially the “little book” delivered to Oglethorpe who then seemingly rejects it, only to then “immediately” take it and read from it. This confusion and Oglethorpe’s rejection suggest some tension. The first book referred to, “which she had taking her oath,” could be the Book of Gospels that, according to the 
Liber Regalis
, the monarch swore upon, as well as the sacrament on the altar, upon which all Elizabeth’s predecessors swore. Does this mean that Elizabeth did not swear on the sacrament, but only on the evangelists? The “Queenes booke” could refer either to a prayer book, or perhaps to the text of the oath to be administered at this point, prior to the anointing. If so, however, the book that is handed later to Oglethorpe by “Secretary Cycill” is confusing—the above description suggests that this last book was brought in during or even after the anointing. Most recently, Dale Hoak has argued convincingly that Sir William Cecil was instrumental in Elizabeth’s coronation and that he amended the text of the oath and handed it dramatically to Oglethorpe in the middle of the service, as reported above, just prior to the anointing.
⁵³
Hoak describes Cecil’s act as a carefully choreographed piece of theatre: “in one of the most extraordinary scenes imaginable, at the appropriate moment in the ceremony he emerged from the side of the coronation stage and ‘delivered’ to Oglethorpe...the text of the questions.”
⁵⁴
This “Booke” has never been found and neither is there any record of the wording of the oath that Elizabeth swore. Hoak, however, suggests that Cecil revised the oath along the lines of the oath amended by Cranmer for Edward VI’s coronation, but that he inserted one crucial line that we know James I swore at his coronation but which Archbishop Laud was later to claim had been inserted before James’s coronation. This line stated that the monarch should promise to obey the “Laws of God, [and] the true profession of the Gospel established in this Kingdom.”
⁵⁵
Due to lack of conclusive evidence, however, whether or not Elizabeth did swear such an oath and the nature of her own involvement with the supposed insertion have to remain highly speculative.
⁵⁶
It also raises further problems with regards to the rest of the ceremony. If Oglethorpe refused to say mass without elevating the host, would he have agreed to administer an oath that mentioned “the true profession of the Gospel established in this Kingdom”?

Despite these changes, however, Elizabeth’s coronation would have largely echoed the ceremonies of her sister, brother, father, and grandfather. On Sunday January 15, 1559, Elizabeth appeared in Westminster Hall dressed in the traditional crimson parliament robes. Before proceeding to the Abbey, Elizabeth was sprinkled with holy water by Bishop Oglethorpe, as Mary had been by Bishop Gardiner, and she was anointed according to the liturgy stipulated in the 
Liber Regalis
 for a male monarch that stressed the imparting of God’s grace and the transformation of the monarch’s body—a sacramental logic. Elizabeth was then invested with the consecrated regalia: spurs, sword, ring, scepter, and orb. Like Anne, Edward VI, and Mary, she was crowned three times: with St Edward’s crown, the imperial state crown, and a third crown. This third crown may also have been that which was “purposelie made” for Mary for her coronation, another hand-me-down from her sister’s reign.
⁵⁷

Figure 4.1 Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (The "Coronation" Portrait), unknown artist (c. 1600 [1559?]), National Portrait Gallery, London

IV

Ceremonies always have to balance tradition and change in order to both retain their legitimizing power, and reflect or fit a new set of religious, political, or cultural circumstances, or the demands and desires of the protagonists. The Tudor coronations were no different, but the pressures exerted on the purpose and form of the ceremony wrought by religious reformation, monarchical supremacy, and the accession of England’s first queen regnants were unprecedented. Despite some claims to the contrary, the Protestant reformation did not render a ceremony such as the coronation redundant. Rather, the level of anxiety, scrutiny, and legal and ceremonial details surrounding both Mary and Elizabeth’s coronations speak of a continuing importance—both religious and political—attached to the ritual, and of a continuing need to work out correct monarchical rule, particularly that of queens and their rites of power. Elizabeth is the only Tudor monarch for whom a coronation portrait is extant. The National Portrait Gallery, London, houses the so-called coronation portrait of Elizabeth, dressed in the cloth of gold robe borrowed from Mary, wearing her hair loose, crowned with an imperial crown and carrying the scepter and orb (see Figure 4.1).
⁵⁸

Figure 4.2 Portrait of Queen Mary from the Coram Rege Rolls (1553), The National Archives

It is striking that this coronation portrait represents Elizabeth wearing the gold dress associated with her pre-coronation procession, and thus with the robes traditionally worn by queen consorts on this occasion. We might have expected such a portrait to show Elizabeth in the traditional crimson coronation robes. But, in this, Elizabeth perhaps borrowed again from Mary. The image of Mary on the first plea roll of her reign—the image chosen for the cover of this book and Figure 4.2—also shows Mary wearing the cloth of gold dress and her hair down, symbols of femininity and fertility. Whether Mary and Elizabeth were in complete control of such representation is uncertain, but they used their coronations as occasions to both protect and promote their position as sovereign queens, to assert their particular kinds of authority, even their gender, and to balance tradition, law, and private conscience.

Notes

1. Quoted in David Sturdy, “‘Continuity’ versus ‘Change’: Historians and English Coronations of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods” in 
   Coronations:
   Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual
   , ed. János M. Bák (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), 243–4.
   
2. John Adamson, “The Tudor and Stuart Courts 1509–1714” in 
   The Princely
   Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the
    Ancien Régime 
   1500–1750
   , ed. John Adamson (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 102. The “King’s evil” was another name for scrofula which, it was claimed, could be cured if touched by the monarch—evidence of the monarch’s sacred nature.
   
3. The 
   Liber Regalis
    is held at Westminster Abbey, Westminster Abbey Library MS 38. The “Ryalle Book of the Crownacion of the Kinge, Queene” is reprinted in 
   The Antiquarian Repertory
   , ed. Francis Grose, 2nd edn., 4 vols. (London, 1807–9), I: 296–341.
   
4. Dale Hoak argues that Edward VI’s coronation was rendered an “empty form” and that the supremacy, and a specifically Protestant supremacy, “forever diminished the meaning of a royal coronation.” See Dale Hoak, “The Coronations of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, and the Transformation of the Tudor Monarchy” in 
   Westminster Abbey Reformed
   1540–1640
   , ed. C. S. Knighton and Richard Mortimer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 146, 147. Of Elizabeth’s coronation, Richard McCoy has argued that, in comparison to her celebrated pre-coronation procession, the religious rite was an “obscure side-show” whose capacity to affirm royal power was no longer believed in: “‘The Wonderful Spectacle’: The Civic Progress of Elizabeth I and the Troublesome Coronation” in
   Coronations
   , ed. Bák, 218. In a similar vein, Albert Rolls has described the “Elizabethan disregard” for a coronation and has claimed that “the English, at least those with Protestant leanings, had accepted the delegitimization of the coronation enacted as Elizabeth assumed the throne”: Albert Rolls, 
   The Theory of the King’s Two Bodies
    
   in the Age of Shakespeare
   (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 101. This essay is not going to discuss Mary and Elizabeth’s coronation processions. See my 
   The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern
   England
    (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), and also see Paulina Kewes, “Godly Queens: The Royal Iconographies of Mary and Elizabeth” in this volume.
   
5. William Camden, 
   The Historie of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse
   Elizabeth, Late Queene of England
    (London, 1630), 18.
   
6. CSPSp
   , XI: 238.
   
7. See Alice Hunt, “The Monarchical Republic of Mary I,” 
   HJ
    52 (2009): 557–72.
   
8. CSPSp
   , XI: 241.
   
9. Society of Antiquaries MS 123, fol. 4v; 
   The Accession, Coronation and Marriage of Mary Tudor as Related in Four Manuscripts of the Escorial
   , ed. And trans. C. V. Malfatti (Barcelona: Malfatti, 1956), 32.
   
10. Holinshed’s
     
    Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland
    , ed. Abraham Fleming, 6 vols. (London, 1807–8), IV: 7.
    
11. CSPSp
    , XI: 262.
    
12. The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Two Years of Queen Mary…
    , ed. J. G. Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1850), 31.
    
13. CSPSp
    , XI: 220.
    
14. CSPSp
    , XI: 231.
    
15. CSPVen
    , V: 430. England was not absolved until the third Parliament in November 1554.
    
16. CSPSp
    , XI: 239–40.
    
17. CSVen
    , V: 431.
    
18. Society of Antiquaries MS 123, fol. 8v. Mary is likely to have only touched the spurs, on account of her gender. See Anna Whitelock, 
    Mary Tudor:
    England’s First Queen
     (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), 196.
    
19. Society of Antiquaries MS 123, fol. 8r.
    
20. CSPSp
    , XI: 262: “and she was twice anointed.”
    
21. The Accession...
    , ed. Malfatti, 33.
    
22. The Accession...
    , ed. Malfatti, 34.
    
23. J. R. Planché, 
    Regal Records: Or, A Chronicle of the Coronations of the Queens
    Regnant of England
     (London: Chapman and Hall, 1838), 6.
    
24. Anne Boleyn wore a “circot of white cloth”: 
    Hall’s Chronicle Containing
    the History of England..
    ., ed. Henry Ellis, 2 vols. (London, 1809), 11: 801. Commendone’s account describes that Mary—like Anne—was “dressed with a silver robe and a head-dress of precious stones,” 
    The Accession
    ..., ed. Malfatti, 31.
    
25. The Chronicle of Queen Jane
    , 28; Holinshed, IV: 6. In the latter, the “blew” has translated to “purple” which could indicate that Mary wore purple, imperial robes.
    
26. The Accession..
    ., ed. Malfatti, 31.
    
27. The Chronicle of Queen Jane
    , 31.
    
28. Juan Paez de Castro, “A Diary of Events Regarding the Happenings in Connection with the Rebellion of Thomas Wyatt and others following the arrival of the Imperial Ambassadors,” in 
    The Accession…
    , ed. Malfatti, 67.
    
29. Janet Arnold, “The ‘Coronation’ Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I,” 
    Burlington
    Magazine
     120 (1978): 735–41. Arnold transcribes the manuscripts that document the lists of clothing itemized for Elizabeth’s coronation. See also Maria Hayward’s “Dressed to Impress” in this volume.
    
30. John Knox, 
    The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of
    Women
     (Geneva: J. Poullain and A. Rebul, 1558), fol. 29v.
    
31. John Aylmer, 
    An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subjectes, agaynst the late
    blowne Blaste…
    (Strasbourg [London], 1559), Biiir.
    
32. Aylmer, 
    An Harborowe
    , Biiir; “An Oration of J. H. [John Hales] to the Queenes majestie, and delivered to her majestie by a certayne Noble man, at her first entrance to her raigne” in John Foxe, 
    Acts and Monumentes
    (1576), 2007.
    
33. Aylmer, 
    An Harborowe
    , Hiiiv, Hiiv.
    
34. The debate began in 
    EHR
     with C. G. Bayne’s “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth,” 
    EHR
     22 (1907): 650–73, and continued in this journal until 1910. For an overview of the entire debate, see William Haugaard, “The Coronation of Elizabeth I,” 
    Journal of Ecclesiastical History
     19 (1968): 161–70.
    
35. George Carew, formerly Elizabeth’s chaplain, replaced the papist Thomas Thirlby within a week of Elizabeth’s accession. See Roger Bowers, “The Chapel Royal, The First Edwardian Prayer Book, and Elizabeth’s Settlement of Religion, 1559,” 
    HJ
     43 (2000): 322.
    
36. CSPVen
    , VII: 24–5. It is remarkable that neither Tiepolo nor de Feria, unlike the Mantuan envoy Il Schifanoya, attended the coronation in the Abbey. Ambassadors were certainly invited: the drawings in BL Egerton MS 3320 show a “standinge for all Embassatores” to the right of the high altar, fol. 21r.
    
37. CSPSp
    , I: 25.
    
38. A curtained pew, positioned near the high altar. As William Haugaard points out, closet and traverse could denote, in the sixteenth century, “any kind of area within a church equipped with a faldstool or cushions and cross-wise curtains to provide privacy for some eminent person at prayer”: Haugaard, “The Coronation of Elizabeth I”: 168. Nevertheless, the signification and whereabouts of this “clossett” or “traverse” have caused some heated debate, leading A. L. Rowse, for example, to claim that it must be situated in St Edward’s Chapel, which is itself also referred to as a “traverse,” behind the sanctuary and accessed via a door to the left or right of the high altar. Elizabeth’s withdrawal from mass, therefore, would have been a bold, defiant and unprecedented gesture: A. L. Rowse, 
    An Elizabethan Garland
    (London: Macmillan, 1953), 27. Bayne also locates the closet or traverse “with certainty” in St Edward’s Chapel: Bayne, “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth”: 661.
    
39. CSPVen
    , VII: 17.
    
40. CSPVen
    , VII: 2.
    
41. The herald writes: “Then the masse began by the Deane,” Bayne, “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth”: 671. Il Schifanoya reports that the mass “was sung by the dean of her chapel, her chaplain, the bishops not having chosen to say mass without elevating the host”: 
    CSPVen
    , VII: 16. The English report, however, does not differentiate between the Dean and the Bishop: “the Bishop began the Masse,” Bayne, “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth”: 670.
    
42. Quoted in Bayne, “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth”: 670.
    
43. Bayne, “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth”: 671.
    
44. Quoted in Richard McCoy, “‘Thou Idol Ceremony’: Elizabeth I, 
    The
    Henriad
    , and the Rites of the English Monarchy” in 
    Urban Life in the
    Renaissance
    , ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 241.
    
45. McCoy, “‘Thou Idol Ceremony,’” 240.
    
46. BL Cotton MS Tiberius E VIII, fol. 99r.
    
47. Roger Bowers argues that she did communicate, and in both kinds, but that this had to take place in secret because it contravened the law of the time: Bowers, “The Chapel Royal”: 327.
    
48. CSPVen
    , VII: 17, translates the Italian as follows: “the bishops not having chosen to say Mass without elevating the Host or consecrating it, as that worthy individual did; the Epistle and Gospel being recited in English.” However, this translation omits the fact that the Epistle and Gospel were also sung in Latin, before they were said in English. Il Schifanoya’s account is transcribed in G. Lockhart Ross, “Il Schifanoya’s Account of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth,” 
    EHR
     23 (1908): 533–4.
    
49. Bowers, “The Chapel Royal”: 327.
    
50. Bower’s, “The Chapel Royal,” argues for Elizabeth’s conservatism relative to her Council’s radicalism. On the inconsistency and unfathomability of Elizabeth’s private beliefs, particularly her relationship with ceremony, see Patrick Collinson, “Windows in a Woman’s Soul: Questions about the Religion of Queen Elizabeth I” in Patrick Collinson, 
    Elizabethan Essays
     (London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 1994), 87–118.
    
51. BL Harleian MS 6064, fol. 4v.
    
52. Quoted in Bayne, “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth”: 667.
    
53. Hoak, “The Coronations of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I,” 150. On the confusion of the oath-taking, see also Bayne, “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth”: 667–8. Sir William Cecil had become a member of Elizabeth’s privy council on her accession and took the office of secretary.
    
54. Hoak, “The Coronations of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I,” 150.
    
55. Hoak, “The Coronations of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I,” 150.
    
56. David Starkey, for example, argues that the “Booke” handed to Oglethorpe by Cecil refers to the coronation pardon: 
    Elizabeth: Apprenticeship
     (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000), 272–3.
    
57. Society of Antiquaries MS 123, fol. 8r. BL Harleian MS 6064 records for Elizabeth’s coronation that “the Crowne the Circlett and rynge to be broughte that her highnes maye assaie the same,” fol. 4v.
    
58. The painting (artist unknown) is dated to around 1600, but is perhaps a copy of either an earlier portrait contemporaneous with the coronation or of Nicholas Hilliard’s 1570 miniature, which bears a striking resemblance to the 1600 portrait.